Echoing what virtually everyone in the thread said, I completely disagree with a stat that tries to code my character's personality. This should be determined by roleplay and character design.

Presence Helpfile wrote:General: Presence

Presence will represent the strength of someone's innate draw as a factor of their personality, their aptitude for leading and influencing, and the base ability of all creatures to be drawn and influenced by music, tale, and an inspirational spirit. Specifically, Presence plays a crucial role in skills such as MUSIC, HAGGLE, and HANDLE skills, and directly impacts the success of commands like RETREAT and RESCUE.

See Also: Score Stats

Last Updated: Friday, 12 December 2014, by EltanimRas

I can see it for something like music and haggle, but those could both just as easily be governed by dexterity and intelligence. Retreat and rescue could be some combination of agility, dexterity, and willpower. To me, this seems like a stat we don't need.

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

Targetable in upgrade, but the argument is towards whether or not Presence really is necessary. It sort of (spiritually) replaces Aura from old SOI, which was primarily used (besides during Power's brief, unfortunate reign) as a "gimme plot if I'm the highest Aura in a room" sign. While all of the other stats (besides Dex, which is slightly under-used) do important things and demand careful consideration depending on character builds, Presence is almost universally dumped because it's just not considered important.

And I don't believe the answer is to make it more important. That'd just make it harder to utilize other stats effectively. I just don't think it's necessary at all, and as Melkor said, the few coded things that it does can easily be re-appropriated to other stats (like Dex, perhaps). That's just my opinion, but I don't know that I've heard of anyone actually purposefully rolling high Presence in SOI3.

It's not a problem unique to SOI, either. I've never really liked that D&D and many tabletop games use a Charisma stat either. That sort of thing really should be decided by roleplay.

A really bad sword with a short blade lies here. look sword This sword hardly even a sword. It's kind of really just a piece of metal bent like a sword. Its blade is rather short. Kind of pathetic, really.